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Vol. 82/No. 3 January 22, 2018
(lead article)
Working-class discontent continues to spread in Iran
BY TERRY EVANS
Protests by working people and youth rapidly spread to 80 cities and
rural towns across Iran since Dec. 28. They began amid widespread
frustration and anger among working people against rising prices, high
unemployment and new government budget proposals that would have
eliminated many subsidies for workers.
This working-class discontent came on top of mounting dissatisfaction
with policies restricting political and individual rights and
exacerbating class divisions in Iran. In a budget that hiked fuel prices
50 percent — now rescinded — and slashed subsidies for workers,
President Hassan Rouhani also revealed increases in the vast amounts
lavished on religious institutions that function as businesses filling
the pockets of wealthy members of the ruling hierarchy.
The New York Times Jan. 2 cited a video interview with a protester who
supported the 1979 revolution against the U.S.-backed shah of Iran and
who himself was a veteran of Iran’s defensive war in the 1980s to stop
U.S.-backed attacks by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. What he is
protesting today, he said, is “bribery, injustice, embezzlement. Who is
accountable? Those living in palaces, ministers who have never been
hungry.”
Protesters also raised demands against Tehran’s wars in Syria, Iraq and
Yemen and its backing for Hezbollah and Hamas. These military conflicts,
involving Washington and Moscow as well as Tehran, have had a
devastating impact on working people. The human costs and consequences
are class differentiated — largely unseen by Iranians in better-off
middle-class areas — while signs and monuments to the martyrs are a
mainstay in workers’ neighborhoods and towns.
Supported by Moscow’s air power, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard forces and
Tehran-backed militias pushed back the Syrian people’s struggle to
overturn the Bashar al-Assad dictatorship and to win more political
space. They have also dealt blows in recent months to Kurdish
aspirations for independence in Iraq.
On Dec. 29 some protesters chanted, “Reformists! Hardliners! The game is
over!” urging an end to rule by both wings of the clerical regime, which
consolidated capitalist rule in a counterrevolution against the
deep-going 1979 revolution. That popular uprising, spearheaded by
working people and reinforced by countrywide working-class strikes,
forced the hated monarch, the shah, to flee Iran. The revolutionary
upsurge was broken when the clerical regime used increasing repression
in order to counter independent political action by workers and peasants.
The clerical regime falsely rationalizes its wars today as the
continuity of the 1979 revolution. In reality, today’s conflicts are
aimed at extending the counterrevolutionary influence of Iran’s
capitalist rulers across the region, establishing a land bridge linking
the regime with its Hezbollah allies in Lebanon, and ensuring Tehran
access to the Mediterranean.
None of this is in the interests of working people in Iran, much less
anywhere else in the region.
Arrests and killings
Both wings of the regime — represented by Rouhani, on the one hand, and
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on the other — give lip service
to the right of Iranians to peacefully protest “legitimate” grievances.
At the same time, Iran’s rulers have slandered working-class protesters
as “saboteurs,” claiming their actions have been instigated by Iran’s
“enemies” in Washington, Tel Aviv, Saudi Arabia and the Kurdistan
Regional Government in Iraq.
What’s more, both governing factions are wagging fingers at former
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose base among working people
and worse-off middle layers in smaller cities and towns has been a
center of the recent discontent.
Above all, Iran’s rulers have joined in bringing down repressive
measures against demonstrators. The regime has arrested nearly 3,700
people, mostly young, according to parliament member Mahmoud Sadeghi,
and more than 20 have been killed. The regime shut down parts of the
internet to block communication.
The government and its supporters mobilized actions backing Ayatollah
Khamenei. The Revolutionary Guard deployed troops to three of Iran’s
provinces to quell protests. Maj. Gen. Mohammed Ali Jafari, head of the
Revolutionary Guard, declared the defeat of the “sedition.” The regime’s
moves, combined with the lack of any disciplined leadership of the
actions, have led to a decline in large street protests.
On Jan. 5 thousands of fans in Tabriz, in Iran’s East Azerbaijan
province, stood during a soccer match and chanted, “People of Azerbaijan
won’t accept humiliation!” A video of the protest was posted on the
internet. On Jan. 7, over 100 people gathered outside Evin prison in
Tehran to demand the release of protesters.
The widespread discontent within the working class that fueled the
unrest continues to percolate.
Washington, the biggest military power in the Mideast, is concerned that
Tehran’s gains threaten U.S. imperialist interests in the Middle East.
It demagogically poses as a supporter of Iranian protests. Washington
pushed for an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting Jan. 5. But the
capitalist rulers of most other nations were wary that a U.N. resolution
could backfire, deepening struggles by working people in Iran.
Tehran’s Saudi rivals have not backed the protests challenging the
Iranian government. “While they are on opposite sides in regional
conflicts, Iran and Saudi authorities share a low tolerance for domestic
dissent,” the Wall Street Journal wrote Jan. 5.
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